This may have already been covered somewhere else (I only recently read TRT screenplay), so if it has, sorry.

In the screenplay, Eli is not only married, but has two small children. For me, this dynamic significantly changes Eli's character and makes the circumstances surrounding his drug problem even darker. It is particularly harrowing that his daughter's arm was broken when he fell down the stairs while carrying her (presumably in an altered state).

What do you guys think? Why do you think this portion of the screenplay was left out?

Yeah, i was always thinking that the famous quote "i fell down the stairs with her" referred to Sabrina, which made it fairly funny. Because i read it first as a quote without any context.

And just recently re-read it, and discovered that it referred to Charlotte, his daughter. Maybe that would explain why children don't talk to Eli. Another Royal-Margot type of relationship? The whole family situation would make Eli in many ways a younger Royal.

Wes said (in a commentary or in interviews?) that they left Eli's family out because you cannot setup a family in just one or two shots. <p>"Say a prayer for Surf Boy. Wherever he is."</p>

Yeah, I remember reading that Eli was supposed to have a wife and kids. I'm kind of glad that Wes left that out. To have that in the movie would have made me less sympathetic to Eli's character. When I think of Eli, I see more the orphaned little boy living with his old aunt and desperately wanting parents and a family rather than a drug-addicted silly writer. I think had they added the element of a wife and family to Eli's character, it woud have made him seem much more callous.

Why do you guys think that Eli uses drugs? Besides from the physical pleasure of it all.

I agree, CentralAmericanWhatnot. Made him less sympathetic. Especially if you interpret the bit about "falling down the stairs" as a reference to abuse, as I do.I'd bet Eli ended up resorting to drugs because of his frustration with his life and all. <p>-John D. Moore<!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://johnmoore.cjb.net/">John Moore's Productions</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://href=http://hans.keenspace.com/">Hans Comic Strip</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--></p>

To quote a "Jared's Room" sketch from SNL, "Just let me have my thing, man! I'm not hurting anyone!" This was said by DJ Jonathan Feinstein, who has a fakey british accent but is actually from New Jersey. Eli's eccentricities, IMO, are all a sham to attempt to be like a Tenenbaum. The vapid, pseudo-intellectual-historical novels, the drug use, the art, the clothes, all of it. He's a faker. It's no coincidence he crashed his car into their house, you know.

"I've always wanted to be in one of your plays..." <p><HR>Check out <a href=http://db.etree.org/aenematron>My Show List</a>!<BR>---<BR>"This is a movie too. Cut, print, that's a wrap everybody. We're over budget, the trial scene's cut. See ya at the Oscars!"<BR>-"Robert Blake"</p>

I think the reason Eli has a drug habit is explained in this exchange:

Eli: I wish you'd've done this for me when I was a kid.

Richie: But you didn't have a drug problem then.

He engineered a drug problem so he could get a Tenenbaum family intervention! Notice when Richie, Royal and Pagoda come to see Eli, he says, "Is it just you guys?" Originally he also said "I guess Margot and your mother couldn't make it."

That set-up is so brilliant I can hardly believe it.

Oh, and another thing: I get a kick out of Wes and/or Owen's slight Cinnamon fetish. First the (deleted) 'grow your own cinnamon so you can make cinnamon toast' in BR, then the (deleted) Cinnamon character in TRT. Here's hoping Cinnamon makes the final cut in the next Wes movie.

diggindignan, thank you. Yeah, I pretty much thought that it was for attention (although I'm not at all adverse to letting people have their thing so long as it ain't all crazy). That line about "it's just you too" was pretty heart breaking. He wants so much to be a Tenenbaum.

I don't know about the drug habit as a call for intervention, it seems a bit of a stretch. But affair with Margot was definitely part of the plan. It lasted at least for TWO years. Margot was 32 in a kiss-in-the-subway scene.

And a remark about Cinnamon. There is a line in the script."Cinnamon looks at Eli coldly.", and she was a tanned teen-aged girl in the script, not a .... hmmm... mature woman as in deleted scene. What kind of evil the original Eli was? The only woman that sincerely likes him is Ethel.

So many Eli lines didn't make it into the movie. Another moment, after the "out of closet" scene Eli asks Margot if they can have a dinner together with Ethel. Margot responds, "What for?" And Eli says, "I don't know. I'd just love to see her."

Also, i don't see any abuse in falling down the stairs with Charlotte, he was hurt too. You don't have to be a drug addict to fall down the stairs, any clumsy person has his share of falls.

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The only woman that sincerely likes him is Ethel.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END-->

I'm not so sure of this. Seems to me Ethel's character in TRT is of a sort of ditsy mother, who isn't really that involved with her emotions. She shuts out her children for 7 years i think it is. When Margot asks about Eli's sending her his clippings she seems to just pass it off as something that happens, not something that mean a lot to her <p>=== Leela, save me! And yourself I guess... and my banjo... and Fry! </p>